


Seal of Fire

by tropic_equator



Series: hark the herald angels sing [2]
Category: Beelzebub (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Furuichi-has-angel-blood headcanon, Gen, Set when Oga and the gang are in 2nd year, honoka and en are ~13 y.o, honoka is in middle school, kind of??
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-12-12
Packaged: 2020-03-20 12:51:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18993031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tropic_equator/pseuds/tropic_equator
Summary: There was once a girl who wanted power, so she became a witch. There was once a boy who was a prince in name only whose kingdom was about to fracture.Or The Misadventures of Furuichi Honoka, Contractor to the One and Only Prince En





	1. someday my prince will come

**Author's Note:**

> En's character is wasted in canon imo, we could've seen more demon royal politics. Also, honoka didn't have much characterization in canon so im inventing basically almost everything for her. 
> 
> let's get this show going

Prince En came crashing into her life the way Beel came into Oga’s life when the delinquent and the demon baby first met: unexpected and unwanted. He was a walking supernatural hazards who turned her perfectly normal life one hundred and eighty degrees around, and Honoka wanted nothing to do with him, except to dispose him somewhere far, far away. En, like his brother, insisted that he stayed, her opinion about his presence be damned.

It’s a fine Saturday afternoon when he suddenly materialized out of nowhere in her house, nearly giving her a heart attack, followed by an entourage of three beautiful maid servants who looked like they stepped out of one of Takayuki-nii’s gravure magazines with the way they dressed. He looked at the interior in distaste and rudely demanded that she served him his favourite melon-flavored Calpis, before sending her to run to the convenience store to buy some when she said that she didn’t have any.

Honoka only complied because one of the maids, the red-headed one, pointed a gun with a red bow on it to her head, and she still valued her life over her dignity and pocket money. 

“Come on! I need a contractor!”

“You could have anyone else. Why me?!”

“Because I want someone with angel blood. Why should a royalty like me settle with some boring, dumb human?”

“My brother’s angel blood has awakened and is far stronger than mine. Why don’t you go to him instead?”

“He’s already contracted with my Pillar Squad and I want a contractor all for myself. No way I’m degrading myself to sharing with my underlings.” He crossed his arms across his chest and turned up his nose at her haughtily. “What would the whole Makai think, the great Prince En, son of Lord Beelzebub the Third, sharing a contractor with his underlings? They’ll laugh at me!”

“Then maybe you can find someone else.” She crossed her arms, mimicking his pose.

“I only want someone who is special, not a low quality human. Only the best for me.” He huffed.

“Wow, thanks. I’m really flattered.”

He gave her a look that conveyed exactly how he found her to be lower than the dirt clinging to the bottom of his shoes. “That would be your brother actually.”

“So I’m just a replacement because you couldn’t get him?”

“Finally! Took you long enough.”

“Oh, fuck you.”

“HOW DARE YOU SPEAK LIKE THAT TO ME? KNOW YOUR PLACE, PEASANT!”

At this point, the demonic energy given off by the three demon maid servants who stood behind Prince En had reached its peak. The flower vase sitting on the window sill burst into flames. Honoka shivered and knew that she was staring at death in the face, but fucking hell, En was really grating on her nerves and she was not sorry that she swore at him. The only reason she was still standing instead of being reduced to pieces of flesh scattered on the floor was that En had specifically told them to stay out of it, claiming that he’s a grown-up now who needed to handle his own matter.

Honoka wished she had the strength to throw them all out of her house. After that she would run to the temple three blocks away and asked for wards to keep the demons away. The temple should have something like that right? Or maybe she should just hire a priest to exorcise the four of them. Maybe she could go to the church and ask for holy water to spray around her house, or she could just dump it over En’s head. That would prevent him from setting a fire for some time at least. 

“Master En, this human is clearly a sub-par one,” the maid with the long blue hair adjusted her glasses and shot Honoka a nasty glare. “Come along, we should be able to find someone more worthy than her.”

“No! I want her!” En shouted and it looked like the beginning of one of his infamous temper tantrums. “Furuichi took my dear Lamia-chan away from me so I’m going to take his sister away from him.”

Oh my god. She’s getting dragged into an imaginary love triangle by a pompous prince. Honoka wanted to point out that her brother was oblivious to Lamia’s crush on him, and even if he knew he wouldn’t reciprocate it. If anything, it would probably made him avoid Lamia so no one would call him a lolicon or pedophile. 

“Young Master, there must be many out there who are more special than her and willing to be your contractor. And prettier too, nothing like this frumpy girl. Someone worthy of your greatness,” the blue-haired maid consoled the prince. Beside her, the two other maids nodded in agreement.

That hurt. She knew she wasn’t the prettiest girl and some days she just hated to see herself in the mirror, but to have that said out loud dealt a blow to her self-esteem. 

On the other hand, that meant En would be less willing to have her as his contractor.

“Yes, I am not worthy of you. You should listen to her and find someone more worthy, Your Highness,” Honoka said as sweetly as possible.

En glared at her. “I am the one who determines your worth and my judgement is flawless. You are nothing compared to your brother or the humans that are always around my baby brother’s contractor, but you have angelic blood and you are less ignorant than the average human about demons. I want you and you should just accept that.”

What a way to make her feel wanted. Not.

She wanted to tell him to fuck off and get the hell out of her house, but the three maids behind him were glaring daggers at her and she still valued her life. So instead, she asked him, “Why do you want a contractor in the first place? You just suddenly appeared and demanded me without giving any explanation.”

“Isn’t it obvious? I want to get stronger. Why do you keep refusing me when I heard from my Pillar Squad that you want to contract a demon?”

It’s true that she had been itching to form a contract with a demon, but she wanted one who was in control of their power and mature enough to not give her troubles. Prince En was powerful, but he was a brat who frequently threw temper tantrums that resulted in fire and lava destroying his surroundings.She knew that demons were dangerous creatures and forming a contract with them was equivalent to getting stuck with them for her whole life, and she didn’t want one who could pose a danger to herself and everyone else around her because of his immaturity. 

“What do you need to get stronger for?” She found it impossible for anyone to be stronger than someone who can turn the sea into boiling lava for seven days and seven nights and burned thirty villages without meaning too when he was upset. Except for Jabberwock and Behemoth maybe. Those two scared the shit out of her. 

He was silent for a while. “There’s … unrest in Makai,” he said, uncharacteristically quiet. “My father’s enemies had begun to move and they’re eyeing the throne. My brother is the heir but he’s still small and weak, and he would be their next target.”

So he was doing this for his brother. Honoka could relate to that.

“Why do you go that far for your brother when the throne is yours if he’s out of the picture?”

She realized that it was the wrong question to ask when suddenly the living room felt like the inside of an oven. En was furious. He got up from the sofa and stalked toward her.

“He is my brother. Isn’t that enough reason? I thought you of all people would understand that,” he spat out. He was directly in front of her. They didn’t have much of a height difference, she was perhaps only half an inch shorter than him, but he seemed to loom over her. The threatening presence of the three maids behind him were nothing compared to the way his demonic aura was leaking into the whole room now and she found herself gripped by fear. 

“Forget it.” He turned on his heels. “I heard from my Pillar Squad that you wanted to become strong so you can protect your brother, so I thought maybe we can work together since our goals are similar, but you are hopeless.”

“Wait!” Honoka called out to him. The blonde maid was opening the portal and En had one foot in it already. He turned his head at her shout. “I’m sorry for asking that. It was wrong of me to assume something like that. But I do want to get stronger and if you can help me with that, I will help you too.”

He folded his arms over his chest. “So, you agree? You’ll be my contractor.”

“Yes, but!” She holds up a finger when his face started to contort into a smug smile. “I have my own conditions and you need to agree to those.”

“Who do you think--”

“First,” Honoka said forcefully, “I’m not a demon, so I’m not one of your subjects. You are not a prince to me.”

There’s an eruption of demonic energy that shook the whole room. Prince En’s eyes were ablaze with anger and the three demon maids looked ready to kill her.

Honoka steeled herself and continued, “Second, I will not be your servant. We will be equal.”

She looked at the demon prince in the eye and asked, “Do you agree on those terms?”

En’s hands were clenching and unclenching. His mouth formed a thin line. No doubt that it was the first time that someone had said that they did not consider him a prince. It must be a blow to his pride. 

“Fine! But I get to set my own terms.”

“Fair enough.”

“First, you are mine and mine only.” In other contexts, a boy saying those words to her might sound incredibly romantic, but not now. “You’re not allowed to form a contract with another demon.”

“Not that I can do that anyway,” she muttered under her breath.

“Second, you will swear loyalty to me only, not to my brother or my brother’s contractor. Third, I will come to you whenever I please and you will answer every time I summon you.”

“Hold up! What if I’m at school or with my family? You can’t do that!”

“Of course I can after the contract! My brother stays with his contractor all the time.”

“He’s a baby!” Honoka did not want him or his demon maids to live in her home thank you very much. “Do I need to remind you that I’m not your servants or your subjects?”

“Do you want my power or not?!” 

“Okay, fine, you will only call me whenever it’s important and I will answer every time. How about that?”

“Ugh, fine. Whatever, let’s get this over before one of us changes mind. Give me your hand.”

He grabbed her right hand and it burned. Honoka screamed and instinctively pulled back, but he held her hand in an iron grip. Heat wave surged through her and though there was no fire, she feared that she was being burned.

Kami-sama, I really shouldn’t piss off a demon who controls fire, she thought as her eyes watered. 

He released her hand a minute later and Honoka immediately checked for burn marks. There was none, but there was a warm sensation on the upper part of her arm just right below her shoulders. She rolled her sleeve to check and found out that there was a mark there. It looked similar to one that Oga had on the back of his hand, but there were more lines on hers, creating intricate patterns. It looked like a cool tattoo, but one that a good middle school girls shouldn’t have.

Well, it’s high enough on her arm to be covered with sleeves, and once the weather grew colder, she could hide it under long sleeves and jackets. It’s not that she didn’t know the importance of that mark, but she would rather that no one thought that she had suddenly turned into a delinquent. Honoka was definitely not a delinquent, although she was no model student either.

“That’s it?” she asked. She was mildly disappointed. 

“What, you’re expecting more?”

“I don’t know, like blood contract or soulbond maybe. Something with more ritual or sacrifice.” She shrugged. “It seems to take longer in movies.”

En made a face at that. “Blood is messy and I don’t know what I would do with a sacrifice.”

“Right.”

They stared at each other. Now they were the contractor and the contracted demon. Honoka still found it hard to wrap her head around this whole thing. A year ago, if somebody had told her that one day she would form a contract with a demon prince and her brother could sprout angel wings from his back, she would have laughed out loud, but here she was.

“I have no use for you now,” En said, “I’m going back to the Demon World, but remember, when I call you, you will answer no matter what happens. Understood?”

“Crystal clear,” she said, and with that, he and the three demon maid servants vanished through the portal, leaving Honoka standing alone in the middle of her living room.


	2. bonfire of a witch

It had only been one day since she received her contract. No, not even one day. One day would imply that she had twenty four hours to prepare before shit hit the fan.

It had only been twenty hours and fifteen minutes. Yeah, that was more likely. She had checked the time. En came to her house at 3:20 PM on Saturday, they spend about an hour arguing before they came to a truce and she received his mark on her upper right arm. The horde of demons masquerading as a biker gang started to appear at half past eight in the morning. 8:35 AM to be exact. She knew the time precisely because she was in the living room, and the morning news was on, and she happened to glance at the clock at the corner of the screen when they burst through the wall of her house.

It’s a good thing that the house was empty so she didn’t have to worry about her parents or her brother caught in the crossfire. The bad thing was that she had to explain about the destruction and she definitely wasn’t looking forward to it.

But right now, that was the last thing on her mind. She needed to somehow get those damned demons to stop chasing her, and knowing them, they definitely wouldn’t stop unless she managed to incapacitate them. Somehow.

Honoka was painfully aware that she wasn’t much of a fighter. She wasn’t like Oga who could go toe-to-toe with a bunch of supernatural creatures. If she tried to take them on in a fight, even with a weapon, she would die.

She had been running for quite some time now, making use of her familiarity with the area to evade her pursuers. The sun was high in the sky and she's running out of energy and of places to hide. There had been several close calls where they almost caught her, but somehow she managed to dodge them. Her body had been bruised in several places and her knees scraped when she tripped and fell in her hurry, but she couldn't think about the pain.

 _Think! THINK! What do you have now? What can you do?_ she mentally screamed at herself.

She had her demonic contract. If her brother was to be believed, the contract allowed the contractor to borrow the power of whoever demon they were contracted to. Honoka thought of En and his fire. If she could even borrow just a small fraction of his power, she could probably incinerate those demons, but she didn’t want to start a fire in the middle of the city.

The shopping district on a Sunday morning was quite busy. Families and couples walking along the sidewalks as they browsed through the shops. Cars and motorcycles zooming through the streets. There were too many people here, all of them blissfully unaware of their impending doom.

Honoka hid behind a restaurant, crouched next to a garbage dump. The smell was overwhelming but she forced herself to endure it. The piles of garbage bags obscured her small figures from view.

From her hiding place, she saw the demons chasing her among the ordinary people. Some on foot looking around, some still riding their bikes. Each one had a nasty looking weapon. At first glance, they looked human, but upon closer look, they had features that did not belong on a human. Yellow, slitted pupils not unlike a snake’s. Webbed or clawed hands. Horns jutting out of their hair. Ears that were too sharp and too pointy or resembling fins. Skin markings that could be passed off as tattoos but looked more like scales. Honoka didn’t know how other people didn’t notice them, but humans had a tendency to ignore things that did not fit the reality that they had made in their mind.

She needed to act quick. There’s no telling what they would do next. Not only her life was in danger, but the longer they were here, the more danger these civilians were in.

She thought of an open space, one not frequented by people, where she could set a fire without putting anyone else in danger.

There's one such place, on the banks of the river near Ishiyama Highschool. She remembered her brother telling her that it was the place where Oga first met Beel, and she remembered it being quite secluded. It's perfect.

Honoka pushed herself to stand and started walking there with that in mind. Steady steps, not running, although her heart beat fast in her ribcage and all of her instincts were screaming at her to run. She walked like she usually did, as if she was on an errand instead of running for her life. The demons were going to notice her soon. She wanted them to notice her and she wanted them to chase her.

I hope I don't die, she thought as she took in a shaky breath to steady her fraying nerves. This plan was most likely one of the dumbest strategies ever thought of because one, she's thinking too much of the safety of others when she couldn't even keep herself safe, and two, she's gambling her life by using herself as bait. There's a huge possibility that she wouldn't make it to the destination, and even if she did, could she really summon a fire? She's never done it after all.

So many things could go wrong really quick, but Honoka never claimed herself a genius strategist, and if she did die, well, she hoped her brother would be pissed off enough to use whatever demonic contract magic he had to avenge her.

The stores and tall buildings of the shopping district were gradually falling behind her as the crowd thinned and she neared the edge of it. When she was finally on the road where there was no building anymore, she broke into a run. She didn't dare to look back, but she knew that they must be on her trail. She pushed herself to continue running until the river bank was on her sight.

Honoka was not an athlete. She was, at best, moderately athletic and while she could run an entire marathon, you can count on her finishing last. It was a miracle that those demons hadn't caught her. Maybe they weren't used to the human world and so many humans caused them to lose their target easily. Maybe they were just bad at their job. Either way, Honoka was glad that they were still some distance away from her.

She nearly collapsed when she came to the river bank, but she didn't dare to rest. The muscles in her legs were screaming and her lungs gasped for air. She wanted to throw herself onto the ground and lie there for a while, but she forced herself to keep standing.

"Don't you think you have enough of running away, little miss?"

The voice sent a horrible chill down her spine and she whipped her head to the direction of the sound.

Seven of them in total, slowly encroaching her, forming a circle around her so she had nowhere to run. They had abandoned their human disguises, and while she suspected that some of them might look human, some were unmistakably not humans with horns, fangs, and animal heads on bipedal humanoid bodies

Honoka raised her hands, palms facing them, in a gesture that could be mistaken as a surrender but she really was trying to figure out how to summon En's fire power.

Come on, En! Give me your fire! she gritted her teeth.

"Ohhhh, look at that. Little miss contractor over here is trying to summon her magic," the leader, it seemed, mocked. His words were met with laughter from his cronies.

"Go back to hell," Honoka spat. She glared at them. She was terrified, but she wasn't going down without a fight, not when she didn't even know why they were hunting her in the first place. She suspected that it might have something to do with being En's contractor.

"Sure, after we kill you. We don't like this world much, anyway," the leader drawled.

"I'm going to burn you," she threatened, although the threat lost the bite with how shaky her voice had become. The demons laughed at that. Honoka could feel her death coming closer.

 _Come on, come on, where's the fire?_ she was close to a full-blown panic when not even a spark light her fingers.

"Man, I thought Prince En's contractor will be stronger. She's downright pathetic compared to Lord Beel's," the leader sighed, clearly disappointed.

"Yeah, clearly he has a low standard. And here I was actually looking forward to a good fight," another chimed in.

"Whatever, we are wasting time here. The sooner this girl's dead, the sooner we can go back and collect our payment," a third one said.

Honoka knew she should be insulted, but she's just glad that they didn't take her seriously that they went for the kill immediately. In the time that they were talking about how disappointingly weak she was, she could feel her fingertips getting warmer. The warmth spread through her palms, traveled all the way up her arms and then her whole body. There were sparks at the tips of her fingers and she concentrated on them.

Honoka thought about the stove in her kitchen. She thought of the time when it wouldn't turn on properly, when the spark around the burner wouldn't steady into a flame and she had to keep on trying to get it going properly.

She focused on the sparks at the fingers and tuned out her whole surroundings, which was really easier said than done when she was surrounded by a bunch of demons about to kill her. But she did, the world narrowed until the only thing she saw was her fingers, other sounds and sights muted. She pictured the spark settling into a flame inside her palms, and then in her mind, she made the flame bigger and bigger until she couldn't hold it anymore and it spilled to her surroundings.

She smelled burning flesh before she saw them. She heard pained screams before she was aware of what happened.

Her eyes snapped open (when did she closes them?). There was fire everywhere and the air was filled with smoke and haze so thick that she almost choked when she drew a breath. She could see something was being burned, figures writhing and screaming inside the fire. She watched those figures until they dropped onto the ground unmoving and she felt a vague sense of satisfaction at that.

Her mind was blanking. All that she thought was _burn burn burn BURN_. She needed to burn everything down, but why? She didn't know, or perhaps she had forgotten what the fire was for. Dimly, she was aware of her hands being engulfed in fire, and so was the rest of her. There was something wrong with this, but she couldn't place a finger on it. She just knew that she needed to keep the fire going or--or--

Or what? What did she need the fire for in the first place?

Suddenly she was grabbed by the back of her shirt and thrown through the air before crash landing in a body of water. Honoka flailed as she struggled to break the surface of the water, gasping and coughing out water when her head came up.

"What the fu--" she sputtered.

"Sorry about that, but you really need to cool down before you burn yourself just like the others," a voice said. It didn't sound sorry at all. Honoka had heard that voice before and as she looked around to search for the source, her eyes landed onto Yolda standing beside the river. The blonde woman grinned at her and waved.

"I could have drowned!" she yelled at the demon indignantly.

Yolda merely lifted an eyebrow, clearly unimpressed. "In a shallow part of the river? What are you, a rock?"

As her senses were coming back to her, Honoka realized that she was indeed sitting in the shallow part of the river. She quickly stood up and discovered that the water barely came up to her waist. Her face flushed red in embarrassment.

“Thanks, I guess,” she mumbled, looking away from Yolda. She was in no danger of drowning but it still hurt when she hit the bottom of the river. There was definitely going to be bruises, and she was also very wet. Her clothes clung uncomfortably to her skin, her hair plastered to her face, and she wasn’t looking forward to walking home looking like a cat who had just unwillingly given a bath. At least her clothes did not become transparent, so she was spared from that embarrassment.

“Go home and change. I heard humans get sick easily when their bodies are wet for a prolonged time,” Yolda said. “I will come later to question you about your pursuers today.” She moved her arm in arc and a portal appeared. Without another word, Yolda stepped into it and the portal closed behind her, leaving no trace of the demon woman.

Honoka quietly waded to riverbank. Once she reached dry land, she flopped onto her back and let the exhaustion of the day washed over her. Now that the adrenaline had worn off, she truly felt it. She didn’t want to move yet, even the thought of moving made her exhausted.

She threw an arm over her eyes, blocking the sunlight, and thought, five minutes and then I will start walking home.

.  
.  
.

She woke up when she felt unbearably hot. It’s the kind of oppressive heat that enclosed her in it, like that time when her brother accidentally switched on the heater in the summer and made the living room felt like a sauna. She felt dizzy and swayed slightly as she stood, narrowly missing falling down on her face. The beginning of a throbbing headache was building up at her temple.

Is this heatstroke? Or dehydration? She thought. Both were possibilities. Today wasn’t a searingly hot day, but she had been outside far longer than she used to and she had very little to drink.

And it was also entirely possible that this was caused by her display of fire power earlier. Some kind of side effects perhaps, burning those demons causing her to burn from the inside to. She wished that someone would warn her about it.

Honoka forced herself to walk. If she was going to pass out, better she passed out in her own home than on the street. Her body moved on autopilot as she walked the path to home that she knew like the back of her hand. Go straight, left turn after that convenience store, right turn, right again, left, go straight. She walked half unconscious, letting her motor memories take over. Her headache was getting worse. Hopefully there was a strong painkiller somewhere in her house.

Finally her house was in view. She dragged herself to the doorstep, and she could vision her comfortable bed that she just couldn’t wait to fall into before she frowned. Shit, she didn’t forgot her keys right? She was in such a hurry when escaping those damned demons that she just bolted right out of her house without thinking of bringing anything. And had the hole been repaired? Her house looked intact.

The front door was unlocked, thank whatever deity was up there for small miracles. She turned the doorknob and dragged herself inside the house, stumbling slightly as she removed her shoes. She was getting dizier, her surrounding spinning even more. The faster she could get into her bedroom, the better.

There was movement from the kitchen area. Sounds of two people talking and a third sound that seemed like a toddler babbling. Takayuki-nii emerged from the kitchen, likely to see who had just entered the house.

“Honoka?” His brows furrowed in concern when he saw her. “What the hell happened to you?” He took quick steps toward her and held out a hand to feel her forehead.

Honoka flinched away from the touch. “I’m fine,” she said, and then her body decided that it was a good time to pass out and everything went black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The whole time I'm writing Honoka I'm just like, it's free real estate bitch, because she was hardly in the manga and we don't know much about her. At times it can feel like writing an OC, which is great, because it allows me greater freedom in the direction I'm taking her character to. 
> 
> I haven't read the manga in a long, long time so forgive me if I got some details wrong. This fic runs mainly on headcanon and informations I got from wikia + tv tropes character sheet page. 
> 
>  
> 
> My tumblr is tropic-equator if anyone is interested~~


	3. Warlock brother, witch sister

"I think she's awake now."

Someone's finger poked her cheek. Honoka turned her head away and pressed her face into her pillow. The finger poked her again and a hand brushed away her bangs. She kept her eyes tightly shut, determined to ignore whoever that was and got more sleep. 

"Shhh! Let her be, she must be exhausted." 

It's her brother's voice. Why was he in her room? 

"But hasn't she slept enough? We have been waiting for  _ an hour,”  _ the first voice whined. 

_ Prince En,  _ Honoka recognized. She kept her eyes shut and pretended to still be asleep, knowing how much it would annoy him that she wouldn’t wake up and he had to wait for more time. But she was also curious about his presence in her room. That was almost enough for her to stop pretending to be sleeping so she could ask him, but the desire to annoy him proved to be bigger.

A finger poked her cheek again. “Come on, just wake up, I know you are awake now. Your breathing has changed,” En whined.

“Stop that,” her brother snapped at En, “that’s her first time activating her contract. You can’t expect her to be fine after that.”

“Pathetic,” Honoka could hear En sneering at her. “Oga could--”

“She’s not like that damned brute! Oga is a fucking abnormality and my sister is a normal human!”

“Yeah, well, she’s weak and pathetic. I bet Oga wouldn’t pass out from something as small as that.”

“You call that fire  _ small _ ?! It could burn the entire district!”

“I could make a bigger fire than that when I was three.”

“You are a damned menace and I don’t know why my sister chose you as her contractor.”

“We have an understanding.”

“What the hell does that suppose to mean.”

Honoka chose to wake up at this point. She let out an exaggeratedly large yawn and brought herself up to a sitting position. The two other occupants of the room immediately turned their heads toward her.  

“Finally!” En threw his arms up. 

“Honoka, how are you feeling?” Her brother ignored En and moved closer from where he was sitting on the floor to fuss over her. He placed his palm on her forehead, feeling her temperature. “The fever’s gone.”

“I’m alright,” Honoka said, moving her head away from her brother’s touch. “Why is he here?” She looked pointedly at En.

“Just checking if I need a new contractor.” Both Honoka and her brother glared at him. “What? I need a contractor to make me stronger and if you die, I need to find a new one quickly.”

_ Fucker.  _ Honoka wanted to slap him. She's beginning to regret her demonic contract.

“Is the life of your contractor really that cheap to you?” she growled at him. “Are contractors really that disposable to you?”

“They are tools, and I am strong. There are other humans who will definitely want to become my contractor when you can no longer be,” En said matter-of-factly. “When they are too weak or I can no longer use them, I will get a new one. In fact,” he glanced at her, “seeing your performance today, maybe I should get a new one.”

Honoka was out of bed before her brother could hold her back. She saw red, and the next thing she knew, her palm was stinging and En was looking up at her in surprise while cradling his reddened cheek, eyes wide and mouth parted open in shock. 

“ _ You fucking son of a bitch,”  _ Honoka spat out. There’s a loud gasp coming from her brother, but she was too furious to stop. Her body shook with fury.  “How fucking dare you to say that humans were only tools for you.” 

“You are a selfish, entitled, spoiled dickhead who thinks about nothing but yourself. You think that you can use  _ me  _ to become stronger with no regards about my life? I might not be the best contractor, but  _ you  _ don’t get to throw  _ me  _ away like some kind of toy that you have gotten bored with. Not when you are the one who wanted to form the contract in the first place!”

En seemed to still be processing what had just happened. He was silent, speechless with the shock of someone treating him like that probably. Good _ ,  _ a vindictive part of Honoka was satisfied, let him understand that he can’t get away everytime with treating others as lesser than him. Then it occurred to her that she had just both physically and verbally assaulted a fucking demon prince.

“Oh,  _ shit,”  _ she muttered under her breath. 

“You--” En begin, having gotten over his shock. “You--” Honoka watched him struggle to find the words that he wanted to say to her, fury written all over his face and the room became hotter and hotter as seconds passed by. 

“Prince En, I think it’s best that you go back to Makai now. I will talk to my sister about this,” Takayuki-nii interjected before any property damage or bodily harm could occur. He shot her a look that promised that she would be in for a very uncomfortable conversation with him soon. Honoka looked away.

“Fine,” En said through clenched teeth. He stomped his foot hard on the floor and a portal appeared behind him. 

“Don’t think I will forget about this, Furuichi Honoka,” he shot her a glare that promised her a world of pain before disappearing into the portal back to his own world.

Silence descended the room. The temperature had gotten back down as soon as En was gone.

“So,” Honoka said nervously, resolutely avoiding eye contact with her brother, “I formed a contract with him.”

Takayuki-nii took a deep breath. “I’m going to the kitchen to get your dinner and then we'll talk.”

.

.

.

“Explain now, start from the beginning and don’t let anything out.” Her brother’s tone left no room for any argument.

So she told him, in between bites of dinner, from when En had appeared in their living room yesterday to being chased by a group of demons and extinguishing said group of demons with fire. 

Takayuki-nii sat on the rolling chair in front of her desk and did not say a word as she spoke, although she could see that he was restraining himself. She knew that he wanted nothing more than to go into a long rant about how she was being a reckless idiot  _ Honoka what the hell are you thinking this is dangerous do you even know what you are doing?!  _ But he just listened and periodically stared up at the ceiling while counting softly from one to ten. Years of getting into hijinks with Oga and recent involvement with demons must had granted him more patience.

“It’s nice to hear that someone wants to protect me, but honestly, I don’t need it. Not now,” Takayuki-nii said once Honoka had finished sharing her story.

“I don’t want you to get hurt again,” she said quietly.

“And I don’t want you to get hurt either. As it is right now, there’s more chance of you getting hurt than me.”

Honoka wanted to argue, but she knew that it was the truth. 

Takayuki-nii sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Be honest, Honoka, what do you actually want from this?"

She was about to reply with, "to protect you," but it sounded hollow now. She thought back to the chase that noon, to the fire that she had created, to the feeling of  _ power  _ surging through her. Her eyes flickered to her brother's silver hair and eyes, to the faint glow of a mark peeking out of brother's shirt collar. She thought about him running around with Oga and the demons from the Pillar Squad.

"Adventure, I guess," she said. "I want what you have."

Takayuki-nii blinked. "What … I have?"

"You seems to have fun," Honoka said, biting her lip. "With Oga, with the demons  You have something else beside school and homeworks and exams."

" _ Oh my fucking god." _

Takayuki-nii was laughing now. Honoka threw a pillow at him, which he caught easily. 

"Do you know what I would give at the beginning for a normal, mundane, boring life? You don't know half of it and if you know, you won't think that I'm having  _ fun."  _

"I don't know. You like being with Oga and now you can do all those--those whatever demon thing from those contracts. I want that."

"So you want to spice up your life and you think a demonic contract is what you need?" The look that Takayuki-nii gave her conveyed how ridiculous he thought she was being.

Honoka shrugged her shoulders, although the tips of her ears turned red. "Works for you."

Her brother stared at her. "Well, there's nothing I can do about it now."

"Yeah."

"I'm not going to tell you what to do, but… just--just be careful, okay?"

That took her by surprise. She was expecting him to tell her to break off the contract or something similar. 

"Sure."

"Come to me if you need help. We'll--we can figure things out together. Promise?"

Honoka nodded. "Promise."

.

.

.

His kingdom was fracturing. He could see the cracks forming, spreading and growing every day. He could sense trouble brewing, bubbling beneath the surface of false calmness and stability, ready to blow up whenever given the proper fuel. There's a divide in his father's court and in the population of the kingdom, as demons began to form factions and taking different sides while his father the king sat back and did nothing. 

It sickened him to see it. There it was, something that one day would be his if he played this game well, and it's rotting from the inside out while the people who were in charge of it were too busy squabbling to fix them. 

En didn't like anything in his possession to be less than the best, and he supposed that it was up to him to fix this mess.

.

.

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm debating whether to delete this whole thing and rewrite it since I now know which direction I want to take it too. And I also get more grasp on who Honoka and En are as characters. Seriously, there are so little about them in canon that it feels like I'm inventing two OCs as I write this fic down.

**Author's Note:**

> my tumblr is tropic-equator.tumblr.com if anyone interested~~~


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